


The Prince's Tale, Remixed

by stereolightning (phalaenopsis)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phalaenopsis/pseuds/stereolightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memories from The Prince's Tale, re-imagined as the writing of other authors (Nabokov, Austen, Shakespeare, etc). An experimental piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Neruda

**Author's Note:**

> Work in progress.

_a la Pablo Neruda_

  


he is a potted plant,

kept in liquor-soured dark,

limp-leaved, black and curled.

above, a chimney, finger held to the lips of God, warns: do not speak.

her ruby whip of hair unfurls, careless, against the sky

and her piquant joy is alien. divine.

through cleaved knots of leaves, he learns:

she calls flowers in and out of death,

she is called after the flower of death.

angel. witch. radiant sun of unwitting power, and he a barren planet, or a dust mote, compelled by gravity to dance circles around her, always half in shadow.

dust and oil and sweat cling to the roots of his hair, the seams of his itching coat, and he fumbles with his words as if they are written on scraps of crumpled paper tucked into inconveniently placed pockets.

her eyes fearless and narrowed, her small untutored fingers wind about the sun-hot swing pole, beneath the aegis of a loathsome, ordinary sister.

then the playground gate gasps her out into choking grey streets,

and disappointment settles on his shoulders like leaden snow.


	2. Nabokov

_a la Vladimir Nabokov_

  


A stone's throw from the unimpressive Railview Hotel, and severed from the brick labyrinth of Edwardian-era row houses by a fishless brown river, was a certain copse of stubby trees which afforded a measure of privacy for conversation or congress. In the spring it was home to a vixen missing one toe and her fatherless kits, but this particular August, it played sanctuary to a pair of wandless, lower-middle-class wizards with nowhere else to go.

Even in summer, Cokeworth's chilly mists descended at random like the breath of Dementors, rendering the Northern industrial sprawl exponentially more Dickensian. But on this day – this day that would inscribe itself permanently upon the pages of his unread heart – the sunlight dazzled on the rain-bloated rill, and Lily's face glowed with verdant light filtered through broad, deciduous leaves. _Les yeux verts_ were no less brilliant in the gloom.

She sat cross-legged, as if in meditation, as she listened to Severus' outline of the wizarding world, and of Hogwarts, which was composed entirely of information gleaned from his mother's weary admonitions or the infinitely more forthcoming pages of her used school books.

"And the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside school. You get letters," he said.

"But I _have_ done magic outside school," she said.

"We're all right. We haven't got wands yet. They let you off when you're a kid and you can't help it. But once you're eleven," he said, nodding, and repeating Eileen Snape née Prince's warning with his softly nasal Northern accent, "and they start training you, then you've got to go careful."

She plucked a twig from the shag carpet of grass and trailed it through the air, a proxy for the wand he had promised her. Her socks and sundress were clean and expertly laundered, but her black and white saddle shoes now bore a ring of mud. She was nonetheless the cleanest thing he had ever seen.

"Does it make a difference, being Muggleborn?" she asked.

He lied and excused her parentage, and was gratified by the sudden softening of her mouth as she sighed the word "good," with relief.

She lay back on the grass, sending midges skittering skyward, and adopted the posture of a sunbathing starlet. She watched the waving, photosynthesizing leaves overhead, and he watched her, drinking her presence greedily, like a medicine, like the liquid antidotes he would later brew with furious exactness.

She asked about his home life, and he ripped fistfuls of vegetation into jagged green confetti as he delivered his evasive answer. He did not want her pity, or her prying. He wanted her proximity, the magnetism of her prodigious magical talent, the delicate way she said his name – and none of that had anything to do with his alcoholic father or clinically depressed mother, whose sole achievement in life had been her tour of Europe as captain of the school gobstones club.

"Severus," she said, and his mouth twisted into a crescent moon, activating muscles in his face that were normally slack with disuse. The zygomaticus major. The orbicularis oris.

"Yeah," he said.

"Tell me about the Dementors again," she said, and he obliged, begrudgingly, with a bit of recycled data about those cloaked and cruel beasts.

This sylvan scene was interrupted by Lily's plain, prying sister, who gave away her position by an awkward movement that resulted in a short, sharp noise. Petunia cast a childish aspersion at Severus' secondhand shirt, and Severus' rejoinder was a snapped branch that crashed into her bony shoulder. Lily screamed. Petunia ran, covering her tears with both hands.

"Did you make that happen?" Lily asked, livid and alarmed.

He lied again, feeling his neck flush with ugly color and hot blood, and Lily did not believe him.

She ran after her sister, with her gait like a doe's, revealing a grass stain on the back of her skirt.


	3. Austen

_a la Jane Austen_

  


On first of September, the Evans sisters travelled to the station at King's Cross with their parents, and during part of that time, Severus stood near enough to overhear a conversation between them.

Petunia's feelings found a rapid vent; in the first place, she persisted in contempt for the whole of the matter; secondly, she proclaimed that she had never wanted to go to Hogwarts in the first place; thirdly, she decried all wizards as barbarously nosy; and fourthly, she trusted that the removal of her sister and the latter's friend was for the protection of the wider populace. Nothing could console and nothing appease her. - Nor did that day wear out her resentment.

Later that morning, Severus hurried along the moving train in search of Lily, and found her sitting near a pair of young wizards who appeared to be as bereft of decorum as they were blessed with fine apparel and loud voices.

Lily offered her friend only the least cordial feeling as she said, "I do not wish to speak to you."

"Do not you? How have I come to deserve your censure?"

"Surely you must know my provocation. Will you deny that we poisoned ourselves against my sister, in discovering and opening that letter from Professor Dumbledore? Though his reply was kind, and her longing stirred my compassion, it is impossible that I should not regret reading those words, which were never mine to read. Stolen sympathy is no less stolen. I should never have listened to you when you suggested it. I should never have been so eager or so careless, for now my beloved sister has little left for me but contempt, and I am much mistaken if I shall ever win her courtesy or mercy again."

"How can this upset you?"

"I have acted despicably against my only sister, and I love her no less for her anger, which I deserve."

"She is of ignoble birth, with no redeeming talent," he said, with perfect unconcern.

Lily did not hear him, but continued to cry, feeling ashamed of herself.

"But we are going. There can be no better balm for you than this. We are off to Hogwarts. Is this not agreeable?"

And when she brightened, he forgot what little decrease he had noted in the strength of her affection toward him.

"You had better be in Slytherin."

At this, one of the boys, who had an arrogant mien, cried, "Slytherin! Who could want to be in Slytherin? I do not hesitate to think I would leave at once. Would not you?"

The other boy, whose appearance was greatly in his favour, said, without masking his distaste and apprehension, "My whole family have been in Slytherin."

"Upon my word, I thought you seemed amiable."

"Perhaps I shall break with tradition. Which house will you choose, if indeed one may choose?"

"My father's family have always proved most suitable for Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart. I am certain that I shall follow in their stead."

At that moment, Severus vented his objection with a nauseated laugh.

"I assure you that I intended no amusement when I gave my opinion. I hope that you bear no enmity against Gryffindor."

"Nay, if you would rather be brawny than brainy, I cannot imagine a better refuge for you."

"And where must you hope to be Sorted, since you are neither?"

"I beg your pardon. Come, Severus," said Lily, "let us find another compartment. I have found this one most disagreeable."


	4. Shakespeare

_a la W. Shakespeare_

  


Enter LILY and SEVERUS

**SEVERUS:**

I would be friends with you and have your love.

**LILY:**

Come, come, we are friends. But as to thy friends,

I am sorry, I detest foul Mulciber.

He hath a cruel nature and a bloody.

What grace hath he to warrant your

affections? Know you what malicious deeds

he did attempt upon a guiltless maid?

**SEVERUS:**

Yes, madam: yet I cannot choose but laugh.

**LILY:**

Why dost thou laugh? It fits not with this hour.

This magic's black, strange, and unnatural.

The jaws of darkness do devour the hands

And hearts of those who cast the devil's spells.

**SEVERUS:**

And how judge you those swaggering rascals,

those rough youths whose bold marauding chaos,

lewd words, and damned deeds defy government?

Can you laud them? Can you praise James Potter?

**LILY:**

How doth Potter's business pertain to ours?

**SEVERUS:**

They meet by moonlight, sneaking from the castle

To bay like dogs, behowl the pale-faced moon,

And launch an hundred villainous mischiefs.

And Lupin, their companion, is vanish'd

Often without explanation.

**LILY:**

He's ill.

**SEVERUS:**

Ay, he is ill monthly. Keep time by it.

**LILY:**

What care you for those boys' midnight revels?

It moves thee to passion, and boots thee not.

**SEVERUS:**

Their reputation's great and undeserved.

Bear not a false opinion of these rogues,

I pray you.

**LILY:**

Yet they use no dark magic.

Thou art ungrateful for the assistance

Thy supposed enemy hath shown thee.

I had report of the events. You went

Sneaking down the fearful willow'd passage,

And James Potter labour'd to save thy life

from whatever beast or horror dwells there.

**SEVERUS:**

Saved? Saved? Believe me, he played no hero.

He acted only for his loathsome friends

sparing his guilty neck as much as mine.

I'll not allow you -

**LILY:**

Allow me? Allow?

**SEVERUS:**

I have misspoke. I cannot bear to see

This lazy knave abuse thy gentle heart

and make a fool of thee. He dotes on thee.

Fie on him! He is a boastful devil!

Yet he is reputed a brave Chaser,

Fine friend, excellent student, kind hero!

**LILY:**

He is a knave, arrogant and too proud.

Your choleric news is no news to me.

Yet Avery laughs like a bold parrot

At evils he hath hatch'd against my friend.

Strange friends are these, that make a sport of sorrow.

I hope you will not call them friends tomorrow.

EXEUNT ALL


End file.
